1. Technical Field
Present invention relates to a system and method for restoring desktop components. In particular, the present invention relates to a system and method to recover desktop components from distributed computers using self-contained package data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today's modern computer software systems are often enterprise systems organized in a distributed fashion throughout the organization. The various people in the organization perform different roles using the computer system depending upon the user's job description. In a banking example, one user may be a teller and therefore need teller applications in order to serve banking customers. Another user may be a loan officer, and need to access loan officer applications to serve customers that are applying for loans. A third user may be the branch manager, and need to access computer functions used to manage the bank branch. Organizations often desire the ability to centrally manage their distributed shared systems.
Traditional computer systems are typically designed to either provided all necessary functions through each computer, for example by using a computer network to access the needed functions, or the system is designed so that individual workstations perform particular roles and are therefore used by a particular user or set of users. This presents challenges in organization where multiple users use the same client computer system. In the banking example, there may be several tellers that share the same client computer system, depending on the shift, day of the week, or which teller happens to be assigned to a particular workstation.
If all organizational functions are provided from the same workstation, users that are not authorized to perform a particular function may accidentally or deliberately perform functions for which they are not authorized. For example, a teller may accidentally, or deliberately, perform a loan officer or branch manager function if the function is available from the teller's workstation. One way traditional systems handle authorizations is by installing software components to handle each job role at each workstation, but limiting access based upon the user login. A challenge of this approach, however, is that each workstation needs to receive any new or modified software components in order to be available for any user that may need such functionality from any given workstation. Another challenge of this approach is that every workstation has to be modified.
Some of the functions performed by users may be client-server functions, while other functions may involve using software systems that have been installed on the user's workstation. Software systems installed on the user's workstation may include legacy software applications and other software that has been written for a particular operating system environment.
A system and method that provides centralized management of self-contained desktop packages that include the components needed to perform particular functions is useful in organizing and managing computing functions performed throughout an organization. A challenge of using centrally created and managed components is the increased value of the role created by the central administrator and the potential loss to the organization if the files maintained by the central administrator are destroyed.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that allows a central administrator to recover component files previously sent to servers and clients located throughout the organization. In addition, what is needed is a system and method that uniquely identifies component files in order to identify the various components as well as multiple releases of the components.